Winter Coming

I recently started my second Alain de Botton book, The Art of Tavel. The first was “The Architecture of Happiness.”  It left a pretty favorable impression on me, so I decided to get another one of his books the library.  de Botton has a pretty unique writing style with some interesting veiws on how the world around us effects us.

This is the opening paragraph to The Art of Travel.  It seemed fitting giving the time of year.  There is really no point to the text, just take it for what it is.

It was hard to say when exactly winter arrived.  The decline was gradual, like that of a person into old age, inconspicuous from day to day until the season became an established relentless reality.  First came a dip in evening temperatures, then days of continuous rain, confused gusts of Atlantic wind, dampness, the fall of leaves and the changing of the clocks - though there were still occasional moments of reprieve, mornings when one could leave the house without a coat and the sky was cloudless and bright.  But they were like false signs of recovery in patient upon whom death has passed its sentence.  By December, the new season was entrenched and the city was covered almost every day by an ominous steely-grey sky, like one in a painting by Mantegna or Veronese, the perfect backdrop to the crucifixion of Christ or to a day beneath the bedclothes.  The neighbourhood park became a desolate spread of mud and water, lit up at night by rain-streaked lamps.  Passing it one evening during a downpour, I recalled how, in the intense head of the previous summer, I had stretched out on the ground and let my bare feet slip from my shoes to caress the grass and how this direct contact with the earth had brought with it a sense of freedom and expansiveness, summer breaking down the usual boundaries between indoors and out, all allowing me to feel as much at home in the world as in my own bedroom.